Weddingbee Boards

We got engaged on January 29, 2008.  By April, we had our photographer picked out and drove to Desin for our engagement pictures.  Our fabulous photographers from Pure 7 Studios took our engagement pictures at Alys Beach and Rosemary Beach, FL.

They used this picture from our engagement session in some of their advertising.  We were in both Emerald Coast Brides and Southern Dream Weddings magazines!

I found my Jasmine Couture (style T934) gown at Solutions Bridal.  They are a wedding boutique in Gainesville, FL with a really great selection of wedding gowns, veils, shoes, and jewelry along with the best staff and customer service.

Picture by Pure 7 Studios.

 

My mom, sister and I are toasting my purchase at Solutions Bridal.

 

I had the hardest time finding the shade of aqua that I wanted for the bridesmaids dresses.  I was so excited that these dresses from Watters (style 2982)  came in the exact shade I was looking for.  We bought the dresses from House of Brides online.  I was a little worried about doing this, but we didn't have any problem ordering through them and the price was significantly less than if we would have gotten them through a bridal salon.  The girls had to have some minor alterations done to them, but other than that they were perfect.

My beautiful nieces were our flower girls.  We found their little eyelet dresses at Target before Easter. 

This is also a good picture of our paper lantern lined aisle.

Picture by Pure 7 Studios.

My husband wore a kacki suit for our beach wedding.  We got it (on sale!) at Bachrach.  They did his alterations there as well for a really good price. I found his aqua tie (on sale!) at Macy's.

 Photo by Pure 7 Studios.

For the groomsmen, we found kacki pants, white shirts, and aqua ties at Men's Wearhouse.

I loved the flowers that I saw brides wearing in their hair, but I hated the thought of spending a ton of money on them.  I'm a DIY kind of person anyway, so I attempted to make my own using flowers from Michaels, rhinestone buttons from Joann Fabrics, aligator clips and some wire.  I pulled out the center of the silk flower.  I pushed the button shank through the hole where the stamin part of the flower was and attached it to the alligator clip with the wire.  It was very easy to make and they were a whole lot cheaper than any of the ones that I was finding online.

 

Pictures by Pure 7 Studios.

 

Here's a picture that I took of my engagement ring not too long after we got engaged.

Beau got it online at Danforth Diamond.  It was a great price, they were great to work with, and it's absolutely gorgeous!  I highly recommend them.

Patty at It's A Perfect Day did such a great job with all the flowers for the wedding.  My red bouquet was made out of hypericum berries, carnations, dalhias, tulips, roses, and ranunculus and was tied with aqua ribbon that I bought from Michaels.  Fullerworks from etsy made my beautiful satin embriodered button that was attached to the handle of the bouquet.

 

 

 

I really wanted pomanders lining the entire aisle.  Unfortunately that was going to be WAY out of our floral budget.  Instead, we went with 2 pomanders on our arbor and paper lanters lining the aisle.  It turned out beautifully.

 

 

 

Beau's boutonniere was made out of a shell and some hypericum berries and totally suited the feel of the wedding.

All photos by Pure 7 Studios.

Westwillow from Etsy helped us make up these invitations for our rehearsal dinner.

I loved all the parasol pictures that I saw on the wedding blogs that I read while planning our wedding.  I bought 6 of them from Asian Ideas.  The pictures that we got with them were great and worth the $6.25 that we paid for each of them.

Pictures by Pure 7 Studios.

 

 

Here are our red and aqua napkins from The Knot that we used during cocktail hour (along with a pretty cool picture of our rings).

 Picture by Pure 7 Studios.

 

 

We made some photo sharing cards that we added to the guests welcome buckets.  We had them printed through Vista Print.  I'm so glad that we did this.  We got so many good pictures of our wedding from our guests.

 

 

We hired Pensacola Steel (steel drums) to play during our pre-ceremony cocktail hour and for the ceremony. 

Picture by Pure 7 Studios.

Here's our yummy cake from Publix bakery.  It was really tasty and inexpensive ($250 for 100 people).  We went with a water themed cake to go with our beach wedding.  I found the 2 hand blown glass fish (in our wedding colors!) online and had them put on top of the cake as our topper. 

Photography by Pure 7 Studios.

 

I was at Publix the morning of the wedding getting platters I ordered for the dressing room and happened to get a sneak peak of the cake!  That's our cake baker too.

 

My mom and I made 200 of these babies!  We did it about 5 days before the wedding so they wouldn't get too dried out before the big day.   I bought milk chocolate, white chocolate, and blue and red chocolate chips/disks along with the baggies from Michaels and got the caramels and pretzels from the grocery store.  The hardest part of the whole process was taking all the wrappers off the caramels!  After the caramels were unwrapped, we melted them in the microwave and spooned them over two thirds of the pretzel rods.  We set them aside on parchment paper to dry.  Once all the pretzels were covered in caramel, we melted the chocolate in the microwave and covered half of the pretzels with white chocolate and the other half with milk chocolate.  The milk chocolate was definately easier.  If I do these again, I'll do them all in milk chocolate.  The white chocolate has a different consistancy.  After the pretzels were covered in chocolate, we melted the colored chocolate and put it in squirt bottles and squirted stripes of the different colors on the pretzels.  We let the pretzels dry overnight and put two (one of each kind of chocolate) in a celophane baggies, tied them off with the silver twisties (these came with the bags), and added enjoy tags that I made up on the computer.  The pretzels were placed inside folded napkins at everyone's place at the reception.  They added some extra color to the tables and we got lots of compliments about how good they tasted. 

My mom and I priced out having these made for us and they were around $2.50 per pretzel.  We made 200 of them for about $100 (50 cents each!).  They were pretty time consuming, but they turned out great!

 

 

I had this hanky made for my mom by CharminglyDelightful on esty and gave it to her while I was getting ready the day of the wedding.  My mom needed to use it right away as the gift brought her to tears. 

 

 

 

 

Keeping with the beach theme of our wedding, each couple got a welcome bucket filled with beachy goodies when they checked into the resort.  We filled the buckets with Swedish fish, Goldfish crackers, M&M's, Stewart's sodas, small tubes of sunscreen, maps of the area, our photo sharing card, and the weekend itinerary.  The buckets were a hit!

 

 

We had a photographer take pictures of our guests during cocktail hour for our guestbook.  She took one serious shot and one goofy shot.  In addition to using the pictures for the guestbook, we used the pictures on our guest's thank you cards by attaching them to the front of a solid card with clear photo corners.